Microsoft Pulls The Plug On Mixer
Remember Mixer? That game streaming platform Microsoft was aggressively pushing as an alternative to Twitch, that felt more like the next Bing? Our gut feelings were correct…the thing just Binged itself. Mixer had the corporate lifespan of a fly, taking off from out of nowhere in 2016 under the name Beam. Microsoft bought it in 2017 and promoted it endlessly through 2018 and 2019, in the usual Microsoft manner of throwing money with wild abandon. Some of Twitch’s most popular streamers like Tyler “Ninja” Blevins were lured to Mixer with exclusive million-dollar contracts. Phil Spencer, head of XBox, admitted to the press they decided Mixer was a lost cause six months ago, but couldn’t announce its demise until they’d arranged a partner to hand off operations and accounts to. “We weren’t going to be continuing with Mixer as it was,” he told Polygon, “and we wanted to find a partner for us who had a similar worldview on how gaming can evolve and the impact it could have, and a